IBM Acquires StrongLoop, Boosting Node.js Support

IBM's acquisition streak continues with the buyout of StrongLoop, which boosts Big Blue's Node.js portfolio of services and support.

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StrongLoop, a small company, with only 30 employees and about $8 million in venture funding, became IBM's latest subsidiary Thursday, after being bought out for an undisclosed sum.

At first glance, this seems like small potatoes. However, StrongLoop specializes in providing services and support for Node.js, a technology that enables developers to craft APIs to suit any need in the Java universe. And this made it a good fit for IBM's broad reach into the corporate market.

One question is, why sell to Big Blue?

"We thought long and hard about this," said Juan Carlos Soto, CEO of StrongLoop. The company has seen adoption of its technology at the grassroots level, but wanted to reach higher up in the corporate market to IT buyers who made corporate-wide buy decisions, he explained. "It's hard to get access to those folks."

Why did IBM buy?

"We're working in the Javascript space already," said Marie Wieck, general manager for IBM Middleware. StrongLoops' product offering complemented IBM's API economy, she explained. "The combination is 1+1=3."

The Node.js framework allows a user to build APIs and scale them up. The technology is not new, as it has been proven by Yahoo, PayPal, and Netflix, Soto noted. What the market lacked was support and services for Node.js in an enterprise environment.

"Javascript makes it easy to develop nodes right away," Soto continued. Javascript also has a large ecosystem, with some 170,000 modules to use. Node.js enables non-blocking I/O, "handling many simultaneous connections in many ways," he said.

But there is also potential for greater usage in crafting solutions for mobile and the Internet of Things, Wieck pointed out.

"Many of those are built on APIs and are now owned by the enterprise delivering the application," Wieck said. What results is an "API Economy," which IBM foresees becoming a $2.2 trillion market by 2018, Wieck added. Because a developer can "express things as APIs, new services can be built around them," Soto said.

To augment its investment in cloud and data analytics, IBM has been acquiring small companies with needed bits of technology to flesh out its product and service offerings in these new fields.

In general, IBM is looking to buy smaller companies that have complementary technology, such as StrongLoop. These companies offer IBM new routes to market or new technologies, Wieck explained. "There is no one blueprint for that." Prospects will either offer "adjacency or opportunity," she added.

William Terdoslavich is an experienced writer with a working understanding of business, information technology, airlines, politics, government, and history, having worked at Mobile Computing & Communications, Computer Reseller News, Tour and Travel News, and Computer Systems ... View Full Bio

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Node.js is a convenient way of creating a library of repeatable Javascript applications -- both on the client and server sides. I've used Javascript for many, many years -- actually when it began - way back in 1995. At that time JavaScript's orginal name was Mocha by Netscape's founder. In pursuit of a marketable name, Mocha became LiveScript. In December 1995, it became JavaScript when it got a trademark.

Node.js is playing a major role in mobile apps, partly because the Javascript that can run on the mobile device can have some counterpart on the server in compiled form. Javascript is an interpretive language--fine for a mobile user interface--but Node.js does the heavy lifting. IBM understands the crucial role of the server in mobile apps, and Node.js runs on many different processors, including the mainframe's.